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What is Sales Enablement and Why Your Company Needs It

As a sales pro, what is the most important goal for you?

You are likely to say that it is all about increasing sales productivity and generating more revenue for your business.

In fact, the primary focus of your management is likely to be on the figures related to sales productivity. You plan different sales strategies for your enterprise and check the sales results to understand the impact of those strategies.

Recently, there has been a growing demand for sales enablement in various enterprises. However, this tool or approach may be different for different companies.

In other words, while functions like accounting, marketing, and so on mean almost the same thing for every business, sales enablement has assumed a different meaning which depends on your business.

But, one thing is sure; it is aimed at improving your company’s sales productivity and thereby increasing the overall revenue.

So, it is important to understand the actual definition or meaning of sales enablement and its importance for your business.

In this article, we check out the different activities that can be covered under sales enablement and the reasons why your organization should adopt it.

What Does Sales Enablement Mean?

It is a systematic and holistic approach that involves various processes and tools to assist your sales team in achieving increased sales and revenue.

It offers more content for your sales team and has a positive impact on its ability to close out more deals. In other words, it enhances the ability of your team to generate more sales.

It also helps you recruit the right sales representatives in quickly for better execution of your sales strategies.

Once the sales enablement plan and strategy is in place, your team becomes well equipped to deliver the right message at the right time to your prospects. This eventually helps you achieve more conversions.

By now, you must have realized that sales it is multi-faceted as it covers a variety of activities. It may fit as your sales function and as your marketing function.

Reasons Your Enterprise Needs Sales Enablement

So far, the trend shows that many large enterprises have reaped huge benefits by using sales enablement tools.

However, the time is right for almost every enterprise, whether a small, medium or large business, to start implementing this approach for better sales results.

You may already have started considering whether your company actually needs sales enablement.

Let us make the task of considering it easier by helping you spot the signs that indicate your organization’s sales team requires a sales enablement solution.

Ramp-Up Time for New Sales Reps

You will agree that getting the right resources for your sales team takes a long time. It is not just about recruiting new reps, but also about getting them ready for the real challenges that lie ahead.

With sales enablement, you can easily reduce the ramp-up time for new sales representatives and provide them with timely sales guidance.

It empowers the new recruits with the right knowledge and understanding of the complex products and services that your organization offers. This helps make them “ready” for making sales in quick time.

Time Spent on the Most Productive Task – Core Selling

A major part of your sales team’s time should be spent on the core activity of selling products and services.

However, if you analyze your team’s total time spent at work, you would realize that much of it is also spent on several unproductive, repetitive activities that should not take priority.

Sales enablement tools can help you automate several activities and reduce the time spent on such tasks.

For example, you can use Salesforce to achieve better workflow automation and simplify several sales processes. Time is thus saved and can be used to focus on the core activity.

In a nutshell, sales enablement helps make your sales team more productive.

Support for Consensus Buying

In this world of enterprise buying, you would have observed that many of the purchase decisions are not made by a single individual.

It is rather a team of decision makers who often discuss the content that you share with them and then make an informed buying decision.

Once you have made the sales presentation, your prospects are more likely to internally discuss it within their group of decision makers. And, of course, they make sure that you are not part of those discussions.

So, how do you make sure that you get a nod from the majority of people whose “vote of confidence” would make it a successful deal?

Well, it is all about the content. If you offer the best content in various formats, such as E-Books, presentations, brochures and case studies, to your prospects, you are more likely to build trust and influence their buying decisions.

This is where sales enablement helps you out, as its primary focus is to equip your team with the best possible content and offers just-in-time sales guidance.

It makes sure that you are able to pass the right messages to your sales champions who are out there trying to close deals.

Customized Experience for Buyers

You would agree that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy that works for all your prospects or buyers. Most of them expect you to offer them a customized experience at every stage in your sales process.

Such potential buyers want you to consider their priorities and challenges that may be unique to them. If you go about building content for all such prospects from scratch, it may take up a valuable amount of time.

For this reason, you need to use the sales enablement approach to offer customized content.

Dealing with Different Sales Situations

If your sales prospect is stuck in a specific stage of your sales process for too long, it may reduce the chances of a successful conversion.

It becomes necessary for you to equip your sales professionals in the field with the right tools, content, and coaching to fast track the sales process.

Sales enablement is able to use predictive analysis to identify the next steps in your sales process and add more value to it. Also, tools like playbooks help you quickly proceed further during your sales process through effective use of the available content.

Furthermore, sales enablement enables you to deal with any kind of sales situation by offering immediate access to collateral, such as kill sheets, talk tracks, and persona-based sales tips.

We hope that the above information about sales enablement helps you understand its importance for increasing your sales productivity and revenue. Do you have questions or points to add here?

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Published by

Ohad Oren

Ohad Oren is Co-Founder and COO of ONDiGO. Prior to ONDiGO he Co-founded several start-ups. Ohad has years of experience in Sales and Business Management. You can follow him on twitter on @OrenOhad
View all posts by Ohad Oren